From the Phoenicians to the Arabs to the Knights: there’s no denying that Malta’s complex heritage includes a mash of civilisations.

Yet, we Maltese may also have a drop or two of Slavic blood coursing through our veins, according to an eminent American medievalist from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Delivering a lecture in fluent Maltese yesterday, Michael Cooperson, a professor of Arabic and a translator of Arabic literature, argued that the much-debated identity of the slaves in 11th century Malta – from whom the present Maltese population is supposedly descended from – was Slavic.

There are very few references to Malta in the medieval period. A number of Arabic writers refer to it, but usually do not expound much.

The longest discussion of Malta is in a 15th century book by the North African geographer al-Himyari. In 1995, the book was translated by Manwel Mifsud and written about by Joseph Brincat.

Prof. Cooperson explained to Times of Malta that the most shocking thing for Maltese readers was that al-Himyari wrote that Malta was attacked by Arabs in the ninth century and then left deserted.

“This means that the Christian continuity back to St Paul was broken. Then, says al-Himyari, the Arabs came back in the mid-11th century and resettled the island.”

Malta was then attacked by the Byzantines. Reportedly, the Muslims and their slaves fought them off.

This means the Christian continuity back to St Paul was broken- Michael Cooperson

“Modern scholars have been pounding away at the slaves: were they Christians who survived the first attack?

“If not, then what were they? Since the present Maltese population is supposedly descended from whoever was there in the 11th century, the identity of the slaves has become a big deal.”

Al-Himyari wrote that the Muslims made a pact with the għabid (the slaves), telling them that, if they joined them in repelling the Byzantine invasion, in return they will free them, give them their daughters in marriage and make them partners in their riches.

The Byzantines were repelled and the pact came into force, the only known pact between the free and the unfree in Malta in Muslim times.

A number of scholars have concluded that the slaves were not Christian because the Byzantine invaders would not have shown such violent hostility to all the inhabitants if a substantial portion of them had been Christian.

Also, had the slaves been Christian, they would have been asked to convert prior to marrying Muslim women. But al-Himyari’s text does not indicate this.

The majority of the slaves, Prof. Cooperson argued, must have been Muslim, even if they were of an inferior class.

It was also possible that they embraced different religions.

But from where did the slaves originate?

Godfrey Wettinger had observed that għabid were normally understood to be black mercenaries.

However, he also noted that this interpretation would involve having to account for the eventual complete disappearance of a sizeable Negro population.

Prof. Wettinger also proposed that the Maltese slaves could have been “the Saqaliba or Slav or other white slaves.”

On the other hand, Joseph Brincat proposed their identity as being one of the following: “Sicilian Christians, Sicilian ex-Christians, and Slavs”, whether “Christians or converts”.

Prof. Cooperson struck off the list the Sicilian Christians and the Slavic Christians and narrowed the options down to Africans, Sicilian ex-Christians and Slavs.

He then turned to geographer al-Bakri, who gave a description of Malta, which was shorter but older than that of al-Himyari. Yet, what interested Prof. Cooperson was al-Bakri’s description of the Moroccan city of Nakur.

In this particular excerpt, al-Bakri used the word għabid to refer to Slavs, highlighting the fact that the word does not solely refer to Africans.

“If we assume that the Maltese slaves were Slavs as well, we would be solving the problem raised by Prof. Wettinger, i.e. ‘to account for the eventual complete disappearance of a sizeable Negro population’.

“So if the Maltese slaves were Slavs like those of Nakur, then we would not need to explain what happened to the African population.”

Do we have a Slavic presence in Malta? Yes, argued Prof. Cooperson.

According to Prof. Wettinger, the presence of “Saqaliba or Slav or other white slaves” was documented in one Maltese name: Ta’ Skorba, which is derived from sqalba (slaves).

Prof. Cooperson stressed that Saqaliba did not necessarily mean the Slavs of modern times, as such ethnic terms were applied loosely by the Arabs.

In the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the word was defined as “the designation in mediaeval Islamic sources for the Slavs and other fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned peoples of Northern Europe”.

“We can therefore say that the hypothesis of a Northern European presence in Malta is much stronger than that of an African presence.”

The lecture was organised by l-Akkademja tal-Malti.